Recent reviews by AOLetsGo

This review is for the Spain & Inca Civ/Scenario Pack DLC only. Familiarity with the base game is assumed. You already have this DLC if you bought the "Complete Edition." The DLC offers good additional content but the store page could be a lot clearer about what you're getting, hence this explanation.

This DLC adds the following content to the base game:

* The Spanish Civilization
* The Inca Civilization
* The Conquest of the New World Scenario (original version)

It is important to understand that this DLC was made somewhat redundant when the Gods and Kings expansion was released, and if you have G&K, you may not want to buy this separately, because: 1) the Spanish civ is also added in G&K, and 2) there is a modified scenario called "Conquest of the New World Deluxe" which utilizes G&K content, and is available as a free download. In other words, if you already have G&K, what you are getting with this DLC is the Inca civ and the original version of the CotNW scenario. Now you know.

Regarding content:

As with every other civ, the Spanish and Inca have special units and abilities. The Spanish, lead by Queen Isabella, have more powerful mid-game units - the tercio and conquistador (replacing the musketman and knight, respectively) - and a unique ability that rewards settling near natural wonders. The Inca, lead by Pachacuti Inca, have a more nimble early archer unit called a slinger, and bonuses related to hills, incuding a better farm and faster movement. The civs themselves are well developed and enjoyable to play.

The Conquest of the New World scenario is really well designed. You play either a European or Native American civ beginning in the year 1492. Unlike the base game, you win by accumlating victory points during a 100-turn challenge. The Europeans (Spain, France, and England) race from Europe towards an undiscovered western continent. The Native Americans (Iroquois, Aztec, and Inca) are already there and vie for dominance against each other and the new arrivals. The "New World" continent is randomly generated during every game, which keeps things fresh and, IMHO, maintains the spirit of exploration and discovery even if it does give up geographic fidelity. As such, the scenario has high replay value.

This DLC adds some great content, but be aware that you might not want to buy it separately when it is available in the Complete Edition and, in large part, in the G&K expansion too.

That's it.

This review is for the Hangar 6 R&D DLC only and assumes familiarity with the main game. I would not recommend this DLC because a) it's glitchy and b) it doesn't add much. Unless you're interested in the achievements, I'd skip it.

In this DLC, you play Bureau agent Nico DaSilva just before the events of the main game. Dr. Heinrich is studying a sleepwalker, and needs your help to sort of break into the sleeper's mind by playing out scenarios in a large hangar that is dressed up to look like a drive-in movie theater. If that sounds weird, well, yeah, it is.

The DLC plays out as 11 horde mode missions in the hangar. That's it. You quickly level up DaSilva and his squaddies between missions. The only new combat element is DaSilva's explosives, which are pretty powerful. You also chat with Herr Heinrich and get a little back story. It takes a few hours.

First problem: there is a nearly game-breaking graphical glitch that causes everything to hang for five or six seconds every few minutes, even if the main game played just fine. Apparently this problem is quite common. Basically a deal-killer right there.

Second problem: the thing makes no sense at all. Like, if aliens invade in the DLC, how is it a surprise that they invade at Groom Range later? And, by the way, since you collect a bunch of backpacks and weapons, why aren't those available at the start of the main game? As DaSilva himself once says, "This is ridiculous."

That's it.

The Bureau: XCOM Declassified is a third-person squad-based tactical/cover shooter recommended for its excellent atmosphere and storytelling - as long as you can look past some really glaring gameplay, technical, and franchise continuity problems. Broadly, this is an XCOM game set in the 1960s, and stripped of all strategy elements in favor of a hero-driven storyline and real-time combat elements. Does it work? Sort of. Is it fun anyway? Yep.

If you haven't played XCOM before, the basics are pretty simple: Earth faces an invasion by hostile and technologically superior alien forces. An American secret government agency (XCOM, or here, "the Bureau") scrambles to confront the threat. Unlike the XCOM strategy games, here you control a single character - Agent Carter, a prototypical troubled hero, as he leads three-man assault squads on guns-blazing missions through numerous portions of the alien-infested USA and beyond, spending time between each mission trooping around the Bureau's secret underground headquarters uncovering backstory.

Always remember, this isn't XCOM like you know and probably love. It's not a strategy game. It's a single-player shooter campaign that is almost entirely linear and provides little or no replay value. The campaign is broken down into six major combat missions, each of which takes about an hour to play through. There are also about seven minor combat missions (depending on DLC), which take 20-30 minutes each and pop up at defined points along the way. The remainder of a 15-20 hour playthrough consists of time spent at the Bureau's base between each major mission, during which time you can chat with a few NPCs; manage your roster of agents; and discover ever-changing expository info-drops (recordings and texts). Completing investigations unlocks "dispatch" missions, which are essentially NPC missions that allow you to level up agents that you don't take with you on Carter's missions. That's it. There is NO STRATEGY ELEMENT: if you want tech research, base building, tight budgeting, and intel ops, play the real XCOM.

That said, the game does a few things right. First: world-building, both stylistically and through story-telling. As for style, it's the 1960s - the conversative '60s that wish it was still 1945. The stars are the guys that thought the Vietnam War was a really good idea. They are the suits, the G-men, with top-secret files, fedoras, cigarettes and flasks, helicopters and machine guns. They run the country, keep civilians in the dark, cover up their mistakes, torture their prisoners, drop untold billions into weapons R&D, obviously discriminate against women and minorities, and, of course, work to save the world. They'll be darned if they're going to be licked by some bug-eyed aliens. This is fun, the way Mad Men is fun, largely because people used to have some frickin style, despite their many other faults.

Beyond style, there is also a pretty great B-movie sci-fi story underlying everything, if B-movie sci-fi had better special effects. The missions themselves have a lot of memorable story moments - the first major mission in a sleepy college town stands out for me, as does a later mission involving a dam - but the story really develops back at the base. Through talking to other Bureau staff and perusing the numerous photos, short texts, and recordings, you really start to get immersed in the effort to fight the alien threat. Which is great.

The other thing they did right was the game's combat. It is FUN. I was blasting aliens, and I really, really like blasting aliens. As a third person tactical/cover shooter, its mechanics will be familiar. They are stolen almost entirely - and pretty successfully - from the Mass Effect games. Cover is easy to handle, and the camera is solid. The mission setup is "arena" staging, meaning you run through basically linear levels, going through empty parts that build atmosphere, and arriving at areas that are set up for game combat, with lots of ammo lying around, cover to hide behind, and enemies waiting to get blasted. I played with a gamepad, DX11 with Vsync enabled. The controls felt a little soft at first but I eventually got used to them. The graphics are very nice and my machine stuttered a little bit when things got really hectic, but this did not detract from gameplay. The fights felt really kinetic and hectic but not out of control, with solid enemy AI at the higher difficulties, fast pace, and a sense of danger. Good stuff.

But all was not perfect. The squad combat, sadly, kind of sucks. Backing up a moment, you take two teammates with you on each mission. There are four types of soldier to choose from, with each class having a few unique abilities to unlock. There is minimal customization: you can decide which weapon to give them (which isn't very helpful, because each class can only use a few of the available weapons, and you always just want to give them the best one you've unlocked), and choose them a bonus buff (a bizarre "backpack" mechanic). Not great, but fine for what it is. In the field, you have control over where your mates set up, and where and when they will unleash their special abilities. You control them via a popup rotary menu that slows time - all very Mass Effect - and it is SO CLOSE to not sucking. The problem is your squaddies are suicidal idiots. They don't stay where you put them, so flanking is practically impossible. They get killed constantly unless you keep them behind you. AND they don't do much damage. So you basically babysit. The game would have been better without them, frankly. Nonetheless, once you figure out how to manage them combat goes back to being fun - just a little more broken than it should be.

The problems really start up once you get back from missions and have to wander around the base, which is about a third of the game. Notwithstanding the story elements and a couple of nicely atmospheric rooms, the base really feels sterile. I think this is because they felt compelled to render it in 3D and it suffers from the same problem a lot of 3D environments have - it's really hard to make them feel alive. Most of your time there is spent walking (annoyingly, sprinting is disable in-base) from place to place. This is BORING. Then, when you find somebody to talk to, you are forced into a dialogue prompt setup that again is stolen from Mass Effect, but this time badly. There are dialogue options, kind of, but it is totally pointless because it has no larger impact on the story, and there is really just one conversation that the developers want you to hear. The "investigations" that characters give you consequently end up feeling like pointless make-work, rather than fun story elements. Also, the lip-synching is comically bad, which is a shame because the voice acting is actually pretty good. Perhaps showing my age, I found myself wishing for the TCS Tiger's Claw from the first Wing Commander game. Just put the people I need to talk to in front of me and let me click on them! Something more streamlined and not 3D would have been a daring move and probably would have saved the otherwise poor base situation. Oh well.

Finally, I have to mention the continuity thing. The idea is that this is an XCOM origin story. So there is a massive alien invasion, with basically the same tech, and mass deaths worldwide, and the government makes huge strides toward understanding it all, and (sarcastic spoiler alert here), wins (duh), and then in the "future" XCOM games nobody has heard of any of this. There is some hand-waving about blacking out the files and misdirecting the public, but... really? It's unfortunate that they had to shoehorn the XCOM stuff into what would have been a perfectly fun game (probably more fun) without it.

And that's it. Verdict: a memorable and entertaining once-through adventure with some flaws that probably get more attention than they deserve. I largely enjoyed the game, despite its flaws.

A Walk in the Dark is an artfully done little 2D precision platformer. It's good for a few hours of entertainment, and is recommended for its art style, including music, and enjoyable gameplay. On the downside it's too short and doesn't offer enough challenge to play for very long.

You usually control a black cat, named Bast, and less often the cat's owner, a little girl named Arielle, through 100 short but fairly tricky levels. There is no story to speak of - it appears that the cat and girl are separated and are trying to get back to each other, which is all the motive they really need. Your goals are to (1) not die as you make your way to the end of each level, (2) optionally complete the levels within a "par" time, collect a difficult-to-reach "shiney" in each level, and beat a few auto-scrolling levels without dying on your first attempt.

Without a plot, you might entertain yourself by identifying all the gaming elements that AWITD has borrowed (ahem, stolen) from other games. This is true both of its art direction and gameplay, although the game adds just enough of its own personality to make it feel like more than a knock-off.

Starting with the game art, the most obvious influence is Limbo, as the characters and landscape slide by in silhouette. But where Limbo was dark and violent, this game always stays light and fairy-taley, with your character's many deaths rendered with a rather artful puff of black smoke. The backgrounds come from any number of recent indie platformers, with bright contrasts and light blooms and generic "world" colorings. The game's music - tinkly piano - is unusually good, although after awhile the repeating themes start to wear thin.

If you've played Super Meat Boy, you'll instantly understand how most of the cat levels work: precise jumping, up to and including sticky wall sliding and avoiding spikes and spinning blades. If you've played any of the million games that incorporate an inversion mechanic, you'll recognize the girl's (only) trick, a gravity flip. If you played VVVVVV, you'll recognize similar tricky flipping challenges in later cat levels. If you played Bit.Trip Runner, you'll recognize the auto-scrolling levels. Unfortunately the game is too easy and too short to really stand up to any of these others - only the later levels were really interesting or challenging, and the game could have been more satisfying if it had more thoroughly explored its own interesting mechanics.

Overall this is an enjoyable, but light, little game.

(would it break Valve's servers to allow unlimited space for text reviews?)

7/10

I have to be really, really hard on this game - not out of hate, but out of love - because while it is a masterpiece of decorative design, it is also a deeply, deeply flawed game.

To summarize my ambivalence to the world of Skyrim, I need only point out that I just called it "the world" of Skyrim. Not "the game" of Skyrim. Because what we have here are game mechanics built around a beautiful environment - not a beautiful environment developed to support a great game. That's my thesis, and I'm sticking to it - this is a world first and a game second.

A for that world. Oh, that beautiful, beautiful world. How did they even do it? It is a 15 square mile sandbox, of which every single inch is carefully, painstakingly hand-crafted. It flows naturally from place to place. It's packed so dense with discoverabe locations, each its own kind of little neighborhood, and it feels unbelievably vast. Throw in some tricks of perspective and it looks even more enormous than it really is. The world is magnificent.

Aside: some people don't like the "sameness" of the differing environments. To me, it's called "Skyrim." So hey, there aren't any deserts or jungles or tropical beaches. They say that eskimos have 100 words for snow, and I bet the art director knew about half of them. I also bet they spent a goodly amount of time really investigating the many microclimates of the northern environment - because they faithfully replicated most of them in the game. Choosing a geographical limitation like "Norway-ish" and then doing everything you can to work within that context is not boring - it's a bold move and I applaud it.

So you have a vast and pleasing world. Is that enough? Well, no. The world has to be populated by interesting places, and interesting people. So places first. Let's start with the cities. Or "cities." In one sense, the cities are the core and the best of the world - capitals to their surrounding environment, microcosms of their surrounding holds. You look around and you generally aren't wondering whether you are in Markarth or Riften, because each place has its own vibe that makes it unique. This is a great thing - it is immersive and beautiful... But. Oh, but.

Walking through the city gates is where you start to be reminded that this is a fake place. No tricks of perspective can make up for the fact that at most there are 20 buildings and 50 people - and often substantially fewer. In this cradle of Tamrielic civilization there are maybe 2000 people. As a question of immersion it just takes away from the game to march across the glorious tundra and up a dang mountain and across a magical wonderbridge only to arrive at a "College" with four students and four teachers, surrounded by six shacks and 10 more people. A "game" of Skyrim would include cities that took days to fully investigate, that are so chock full of intrigue and secrets that you couldn't possibly find them all without a lot of hard work. Plop ten of those kinds of places into the word of Skyrim and you might really have something. As it is, you don't. It takes about a half hour to find every place of interest and to find and talk to every person worth talking to.

Which brings us to people. Point the First, in the broad strokes, there are a wonderful variety of realized characters, each with their own backstory and clearly lived life. Point the Second: it's not enough. Consider Sapphire in Riften. She leans against a wall and when you first meet her she tells you to screw off because you have no business with her. Awesome! This is how many real people might react. But then the immersion-breaking starts. If you murder the barkeep in cold blood right in front of her, she will say the same thing. If you save a puppy, she doesn't give a rip. And again and again. Defeat the empire for the rebellion? The Stormcloak guards don't even know who you are. Become the apostle of a daedric prince that promotes cannibalism? Meh, canni-what? Yawn. Rise to the leadership of a group of known werewolves? Come on over and buy some tomatoes! Have you met my daughter? This in a nutshell gets at what is wrong with Skyrim's population. In a game where the whole point is to become a known quantity, this is unforgivable. What am I out there assassinating people for if I don't get no hate from the lawful goods and no love from the chaotic evils? Oh wait, there are no moral factions. The people are fake.

And the people are also pretty boring. Do I want to know what the Jarl of Winterhold thinks of the Thieves Guild? Tough sand! And never mind the poor lumberworker down the road - he won't even tell me what he thinks of the Jarl. A woman who is supposed to spend her entire life selling food right in front of Jorvasskr has no opinion on the Companions. Two to four dialogue options apiece do not an immerive storyland make. This is because the game was secondary.

But, but, people give you quests. True! And those quests are also boring. Go get some loot - go kill this guy. Come back. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. God help you if you are much curious as to motive, because mostly the quest info gives you the bare minimum to get you chasing the omni-present quest marker (which is impossible to turn off because quest journaling is incoherent). Eventually you may see some pretty lights or a semi-interesting character may die, but in the meantime you will have spent your time crawling through five dungeon types which, while admirably varied, just aren't interesting enough after the tenth one. But it's always a very, very pretty walk to the dungeons. What game?

During your crawls, you will hit things with a very limited selection of melee attacks, because magic is completely nerfed after about level 15 (it stil takes my Level 58 character a long while to fry a mudcrab - with magical fire) given the game's poor balancing and much simplified magic options. You might mix things up by sneaking up on a few at least.

As for the questlines, I will be positive here. I enjoyed the stories in all of them. The problem is, quite simply, that I enjoyed the stories in all of them during the same playthrough. Do the requisite dungeon crawling and you cannot fail to become the high king poobah of each and every group in the land. Which is great for casual players, but disappointing if you care about, you know, role playing.

Speaking of which, calling this an RPG is an insult to all other RPGs. If Skyrim is an RPG then so is Gears of War - you are given a role to play. Class buffs and a few special powers does not an RPG make. There are no consequences to your "choices," no world reaction to your actions, few alternative means to any particular end. If you disagree try to play through the game without picking up a weapon. Try to murder all of the Imperial Jarls and report the good news to Ulfric. Try to murder Ulfric and report the good news to Tullius. Good luck! This is not an RPG.

Also, bugs. Seriously.

So why do I still recommend this game, and very, very highly at that? One word: mods. Not all of the above can be addressed, but a lot has been, and the game still offers a nearly endless amount of content and playable enjoyment. I love the game like I love my family: with a large amount of frustration.

A little hard to get into, but then you have to play it over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and...

ART says: You are informed! You will not find this game disagreeable! The Martian atmosphere is inhospitable to human life. Human!

The game is art. The run and gun is just decent, but the story, the characters, the plot, and the environmental are all incredible. People can disagree, but in my opinion this is the best BioShock yet.

The best example of interactive storytelling made to date. Production is top notch and the story is unforgettable. Can't wait for Season 2.

An exploration of more than a vacant office buiding, this little title exposes the gamer's soul with humor, heartache, and biting self-criticism. I laughed, cried, and hated myself.